Ironvoid

Ironvoid is a single-ship duel. You command one warship against one enemy warship on a hex plot, and the engagement runs until one of them is finished. This tutorial covers everything you need to fight your first battle.

1. Beginning a Game

1. Launch the game from the Tronsoft Games library. The briefing screen appears.
2. Pick your ship from the three hulls on the left.
3. Pick the enemy ship on the right. Any hull may face any hull, including its own class.
4. Choose a skill level — Regular, Veteran, or Ace — and a debris density for the battle area.
5. Press Launch Engagement.

Choosing a hull

2. The Screen

• Left panel — your ship: shield rosette, frame, reactor, drive, sensors, batteries, and your weapon list with a FIRE control on each mount.
• Centre — the tactical plot, the impulse ribbon beneath it, and the command bar.
• Right panel — the enemy as your sensors read it, the seeker track list, and the combat log.

The shield rosette is the most important readout on the screen. It shows all six facings at once: facing 1 is dead ahead, and the numbers run clockwise to facing 6 on your port bow. A dark wedge is a facing that is nearly gone. Reinforcement bought this turn shows as +n on top of the base value.

3. Turn Order

Every turn runs in the same order:

1. Energy allocation. Both ships commit their power. Yours is chosen on the allocation sheet; the enemy commits at the same moment and you do not see it.
2. Eight impulses. On each impulse, ships that are due to move do so, then seekers advance, then weapons fire.
3. End of turn. Reinforcement expires. Batteries carry over. Damage does not repair itself.

4. Energy Allocation

This is the heart of the game. Your reactor produces a fixed number of power points per turn. You must spend them before the turn starts, and whatever you commit is locked in for all eight impulses. Unspent power is lost.

Four presets across the top build a plan in one click: Standard Patrol (balanced), Alpha Strike (everything into guns), Evasive (speed and ECM), and Batten Down (shields and repair). Start with presets; adjust them once you can see what a turn costs.

Charging and overloading

Each weapon has three states. Cold costs nothing and cannot fire. Standard arms in one turn. Overload costs more, hits far harder, and cannot reach past a short range — and a rift torpedo needs a second full turn to build the overload before it will fire at all.

5. Movement

Speed is a schedule, not a distance. A ship at speed 8 moves on all eight impulses. A ship at speed 4 moves on four of them, spread evenly. A ship at speed 1 moves once, on the eighth impulse. The impulse ribbon under the plot marks the impulses you move on, so you can see exactly when you will be committed.

Turn mode is how many hexes you must travel in a straight line before you may change facing. The Aegis turns every 2 hexes; the Ravager needs 4. The panel tells you when the helm will answer.

• Press A or the Port button to turn one hexside to port.
• Press D or the Starboard button to turn one hexside to starboard.
• Press Space or Impulse to advance one impulse.
• Press R or Run Turn to play out the remaining impulses without stopping.

6. Firing

A weapon can fire when it is charged, when the target is inside its arc, and when nothing blocks the line. Arcs are marked on each mount:

Click FIRE on a mount, or press the number key shown beside it. The panel greys out any mount that has no solution, so if a button is dead the shot is not there.

Arc emitters roll damage on a range band table — brutal inside 1 hex, negligible past 16. Lances and torpedoes always do their full damage but need a die roll to hit, and that roll gets harder with range and with enemy ECM. Missile racks and plasma launchers do not fire at the enemy; they put a seeker on the plot that flies on its own.

Seekers

• Hunter missiles can be shot down. Click an inbound seeker in the track list — or press T to cycle onto it — then fire a light emitter at it. Only light emitters track a seeker.
• Plasma blooms cannot be shot down at all — but they lose strength every hex they cross, so the answer is distance, not point defence.

7. Damage

Damage strikes the shield facing the shot came from. Reinforcement absorbs first, then the facing's own strength. Anything left over goes into the ship, and a weighted table decides what it hits:

Damage control

At the end of every turn each surviving ship patches exactly one damaged system, chosen at random from whatever is broken. Reactor output recovers 2 points; drive, sensors and batteries recover 1; or a knocked-out weapon mount comes back online. The log records it.

Frame damage is never recovered. Everything else is a race between the damage you take and the one repair a turn you are allowed.

8. Winning and Losing

You win when the enemy ship's frame reaches zero, or when its command deck has taken enough punishment that the crew strikes their colours. You lose the same two ways. If neither ship is finished within the engagement limit, the battle is recorded as broken off.

Every engagement ends with an after-action report: frame remaining, total shield strength absorbed, damage thrown, shots on target, and turns elapsed.

9. Saving and Restarting

Ironvoid engagements are short and are played in one sitting, so the game does not write save data and stores nothing on your machine. To start over, press New Engagement on the after-action report, or reload the game from the library at any time.

10. Controls

Everything on the keyboard is also on screen: the Port, Starboard, Impulse, Run Turn, Batteries, Weapons Free and Rules controls sit in the command bar under the plot, and every weapon has its own FIRE button. The Rules button opens a summary of everything in this tutorial without leaving the battle.

11. Three Things That Will Save You

1. Do not let a facing get to zero. Once a facing is stripped, every shot from that side goes straight into your systems. Turn a fresh facing towards the enemy before it happens, not after.
2. Speed is a commitment. High speed on a heavy hull means you will be past the enemy and pointing the wrong way for several impulses. Slower is often better.
3. Overload only when you know you will be close. An overloaded torpedo that never gets inside its reach is two turns of your reactor thrown away.